If you have an online business or are planning to start one then you’ve probably heard of payment gateways. To be able to sell anything online, you will need a way to receive the money paid before you send out an item or product to a customer. You can opt for cash-on-delivery but getting paid first is always better and safer for you as the seller. To be able to pay online, you will need something that can receive payments through a credit card or direct transaction.
A payment gateway is what you need to be paid online. This is a financial service that is intended for online businesses where they are able to receive credit and online payments. This serves as an online point of sale similar to the physical point of sale. The difference is that you don’t swipe a card or read a microchip. Instead, card numbers are inputted together with the CVV number which is then going to be processed and approved. Other ways of paying directly can be done like putting money in your payment gateway account to buy and pay for anything that you purchase online. Visit this page to learn more about online payment methods.
With such functionality available on your website, you can process payments for purchases without hassle. Your customers can immediately buy items that they want to with the use of credit cards, debit cards, and other online paying options. Once their transaction is approved or successful, you can already ship out the items which will be delivered to your customer without any fear of non-payment.
There are a lot of payment gateways online at different price points with different features. Here are some of the things that you need to know to choose the right one for you:
Security
There are a lot of threats when it comes to methods of paying. If people can cheat and steal physically, then they can cheat and steal online too. There are a lot of hackers and scammers out there who will want your customers’ financial information to steal and scam. Credit card scams are rampant so it is necessary for card information to be kept as safe as possible.
To make sure that your customer feels safe in your online store, you need to choose a payment gateway that is known to be safe. It needs to have high-level encryption with at least a 128-bit encryption to make sure that there will no breaches in security.
Another security feature that is important is a digital signature. A digital signature can be anything used to verify that the person trying to access certain data is the real user and not someone else.
This digital signature can be a personal identification number, your actual signature, or a photo signature where a picture of the user is taken at that moment through your phone’s camera or web camera. Click this link to know more about digital signatures: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_signature.
There is one last feature that can be used in making sure that transactions are secure. Dynamic IPs are used to allow transactions that are done on your accounts IP address. If a purchase is tried on another IP address, then the transaction will be denied. This, however, can sometimes become a hassle as people travel from time to time and will need to purchase things from different addresses. This is an option for those who want to keep transactions very safe.
Hosted or Integrated
Depending on your service provider, transactions are either done on your site or outside. If your gateway is hosted then the customer will leave your site to process the transaction. If it is integrated, then your buyer won’t have to leave your site to process a payment. Click here to learn how to integrate a gateway to your website.
Payment Process
One of the best ways to retain customers and make sure that a purchase moves forward is to make the transaction as comfortable as possible. The experience of your buyers as they pay for the items that they want to buy is important. It is like in the physical world where people lose interest when paying for an item is too complicated or the cue is too long.
If your payment process is too tedious and there are too many steps, then, it can discourage buyers from continuing with the purchase or from coming back to purchase additional products. So make sure that your process is simple and easy so that paying for items is smooth. This way, it becomes a breeze to pay for items bought and won’t be a hassle or a bad experience for your customers.
There are many of these services available on the internet. You can use services like Paypal, Stripe, Skrill, or even buy NMI gateway as these are some of the top providers in the market.
Choose the right service provider for you based on the needs of your business. Make sure that the price you are paying is worth it. If you don’t need very tight security, then opt for normal security which is okay since tighter security is more essential to very expensive items and for those that has a higher risk for scams.